House that Dom built (for £22k)

How would you like to build your own home in just five weeks for a mere £22,000 – a tenth of the price of the average family house in Britain? It’s no garden shed either. Irish architect Dominic Stevens’ design offers 50m2 of living space – roughly the same as a two bed flat – with the latest insulation and energy saving technology.

Interested? Well here’s the kicker: Stevens isn’t even offering to sell the plans, he’s giving you them for free by posting them on the internet.
So is he mad, or is this some sort of elaborate hoax? The answer, it seems is neither: Stevens wants to take the mystique out of house building and prove anyone can do it – and that more people should.

“It’s not magic,” he told the Big Issue this week. “It’s just doing everything as simply and economically as possible and cutting out the labour costs. You do that by making it an easy thing to build so that amateurs can do it.”

Stevens is just putting the finishing touches to his own version of the house, in Cloone, Co Leitrim. He kept costs down by utilising local and cheaply available materials, using as little concrete as possible and calling in friends and neighbours to help.